THORN TREE

Ludington’s lushly descriptive and assured second novel ranges from California’s late-1960s counterculture to the pre-Covid-19 near present.

In 2017, two survivors of the ’60s, both veterans of prison stints, coexist uneasily in separate houses willed to them by a mutual friend on an estate in Beverly Hills. Pensive Daniel, 68, is best known for creating—and then blowing up—the elaborate art installation in the desert that gives the novel its title, though more recently, he has been working as a high school English teacher. Enigmatic, alcoholic Jack, 77, is supposed to be caring for his cherubic 6-year-old grandson, Dean, while Dean’s actress mother, Celia, “fresh out of rehab number two,” is off filming a movie, but Jack is so often distracted that the unsupervised Dean frequently wanders off to hang out with Daniel. As the novel fills in their backstories, it becomes clear that the lives of both men were shaped by visits to a Northern California commune, encounters with a cult leader, experiences with LSD, and a significant Grateful Dead concert, as well as by the death of a woman important to them both. The most affecting chapters deal with Daniel’s slow transformation and his recovery from tragedy through the creation of art, which is described in meticulous detail. But Ludington’s tendency to spend long stretches developing secondary characters—such as Daniel’s artist son or the multiple drug dealers Jack gets to know—only to drop them precipitously, slows the momentum of the novel, as does the grating reiteration of the sense of impending disaster experienced by nearly all the characters: Celia, for example, feels “a monolithic fear located behind her sternum” and “radioactive dread.” A rushed, violent, and confusing ending throws the otherwise meditative novel off-kilter, without resolving the many questions it raises.

A meandering take on the repercussions of life in a fascinating era.